Errors in the Ministry of Defence's Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system could force the Ministry of Defence to write off tens of millions of pounds, it has emerged.

In July, the NAO qualified the Ministry of Defence's accounts, saying that errors in 14 per cent of sample transactions made using the JPA system would translate to Â£268.4m in errors overall. That total was estimated to include Â£204.3m in overpayments and Â£64.1m in underpayments.

Terence Jagger, the MoD's director of financial management, told the committee that the ministry was confident of being able to recover more than half of the incorrect transactions.

"Of the amount of actual errors I would hope that we would be writing off - this is no more I think than an intelligent guess â but I would hope considerably less than half," said Jagger.